Chelsea’s 20 year old costs his team big – don’t count on him to be ready next season

He certainly has been very highly rated and has a lot of talent. But he’s not the finished article yet. He’s got flaws in his game, and now he’s being tested on loan every week at a high level in Ligue 1, they’re becoming more clear.

Strasbourg played out a 3-3 draw with PSG this weekend – an impressive result – but the feeling is that they might have won the game had Penders not made mistakes.

We saw a lot of criticism of the Belgian online for pushing his saves back into the middle of the goal rather than out sideways. He also gave away a very silly penalty – one that was almost Robert Sanchez-esque, in fact.

This is all totally normal, of course. That’s the whole reason he’s been sent there – he can make mistakes outside of the insanely intense scrutiny of the Premier League.

This is also the kind of this which annoys Strasbourg fans about being our “sister club” – they get to soak up the mistakes along the way, and we get the finished product.

We look forward to seeing his progress – but we should all be aware he might be further from ready than we hoped.

In other news…

Penders isn’t the only player to have struggled over the weekend – Jamie Gittens appeared in the second half for Chelsea and really struggled to get up to speed. Enzo Maresca had some interesting comments about him you can read here.

In more positive news, Josh Acheampong scored his first senior goal and spoke to Chelsea TV about what the manager had told him.